Daily Forex Fundamentals – March 8, 2013

U.S. Dollar (USD)

Risk appetite was given a huge boost yesterday, thanks to the successful bond auction in Spain and interest rate decisions from the BOE and ECB. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the performance of the Greenback versus other major currencies, fell to 82.56 after it had opened the day at 82.93. Read more…

Euro (EUR)

They don’t call the ECB Governor “Super Mario” for nothing! Thanks to his surprisingly upbeat tone yesterday, Mario Draghi inspired a 113-pip rally in EUR/USD; 87-pip rise in EUR/GBP, and a whopping 209-pip boost on EUR/JPY. What a coup! Read more…

British Pound (GBP)

Thanks to the BOE’s decision to keep monetary policy unchanged, GBP/USD was able to stay above the 1.5000 mark and bounce up to a high of 1.5082. However, the rally was short-lived as the pair slid back to the 1.5020 area at the end of the day. Read more…

Japanese Yen (JPY)

The Japanese yen received a huge beating yesterday as the prospect of further monetary easing weighed heavily on the low-yielding currency. USD/JPY is currently trading at 94.93, its highest level in almost three years. Read more…

Canadian Dollar (CAD)

Who’s the weakling now? Thanks to positive risk sentiment and Canadian data, the Loonie was able to gain back most of its intraweek losses against its counterparts. USD/CAD fell to 1.0289 after hitting an intraday high at 1.0330. Read more…

Australian Dollar (AUD)

The overall positive market sentiment helped the Aussie rally versus the safe haven Greenback yesterday. AUD/USD began the day at 1.0243 and closed the U.S. trading session 34 pips higher at 1.0278. Read more…

New Zealand Dollar (NZD)

What a topsy-turvy day for the Kiwi! NZD/USD made a couple of failed attempts to break past the .8300 major psychological handle but ended up moving sideways around the .8275 area for almost an entire day. Is there any catalyst for a big move today? Read more…

Swiss Franc (CHF)

Woah, what a selloff! After consolidating near .9500, USD/CHF crashed to a low of .9410 then moved sideways around the .9400 area during the U.S. session. What the heck happened? Read more…

Bonnie and Clyde, peanut butter and jelly, Justin Bieber and his hair. Some things just go well together.

I have a question regarding the USD on the last paragraph. “if the actual number exceeds forecast ……” this would mean that the number is in favour of US and why would that make the Greenback lose ground?

thank you.

huck

I’m not Pip Diddy, but I can answer that for you. I think the market has been driven by risk sentiment lately. This means that when good data comes out, traders seek higher yield (sell the dollar and the yen in favor of the euro, pound, etc) because they think the global economy is getting better. If the NFP comes in better than expected, it could trigger positive risk sentiment and make traders sell the Greenback!

MerryweatherFX

thank you Hucklekiwi Pip. I used to think that if the economic data from US is good, it would favour the Greenback. So it’s sort of going in opposite direction -_-“

Guest

Not necessarily. As you may have noticed today’s NFP blew expectations out of the window yet the USD gained a lot. So in this case the relationship was not inverse.

It depends on what the market situation is at any given point in time. This time it was the old high nfp->less QE->stronger dollar cliche. Tomorrow it may be the even older high nfp->risk on->weaker dollar rule.

In any case, you should never follow calendar recommendations which say stuff like “if this US number is higher then the USD will gain”.

Guest

I think he ment unemployment rate, which is anticipated to have remained at 7.9%.

Farhad

Man, looks like loonie was ahead of everything I Traded CAD/JPY seems that it was the best. Thanks for sharing.